Breaking
News - The Ministry of Education, Peru, recently
announced that each child being taught in one of Bruce Peru´s
informal schools, who has successfully completed one year as a Bruce
Peru student, will be awarded the same certificate as all students
in the Peruvian Education System: for having completed one year of
school. [For now this applies only to the Provence of La Libertad].
Of course we are absolutely delighted, grateful for the recognition
and thrilled for the children. When this privilege is extended to
all Provences, and the Government adopts our programme as its own
solution for out-of-school children: then we can all become
friends.

Where are they
now?.24 May Since
opening our programme to educate street children in Latin
America [2000 - Panama, 2001 - Peru etc.] we have gotten 3,006
children into schools.. Currently over two thousand street
kids are in our Latin America programmes. We found each child,
started him in one of our little shanty schools, caught him up
with children who had been in school all along. Finally we
enroll them in state school & sponsor them for two
years.But
what becomes of them when we finally let go?Eighty
per cent stay in schoolHere is a photo account of one group
of our children taken over 2 years.

Every Child
has the right to free Education [but 26% of Peru's
Kids don't receive it.]We are honoured and
grateful so many talented, motivated people join
the campaign.

Our campaign to get the
National Government of Peru to recognise the large
population of Peruvian children who are not receiving
education, and to do something effective to get these
children educated. [We are offering our own successful
progects as one example] has been
launched!

Life on the
garbage heap

Since last year we
have been working in the regional dump - "El
Milagro" where .hundreds
of children and moms live in the fetid air
of roting garbage and toxic gasses. Over several visits
and mingling with the poor garbage pickers we finally
managed to gain their trust enough for Bruce to make our
pitch to the children & parents.

."We will help educate your children if
you will let them stop working and go to school".We
convinced enough of them to open our first classroom
nearby.

(While
many others still work with us in their home
countries)When we started our volunteer
program we didn't dream so many kind talented
people would take up the challenge of aiding 's
poorest children as their own personal project.
Thank you
all.

Our campaign: "DON'T
FEEL SORRY FOR STREET CHILDREN!" is still working in
centres where lots of international tourists are
encountering 's child laborers on a daily
basis.The object of the campaign is to recruit
volunteers from the tourist population who visit each
year,

It takes 2 Years
!. When we find a child, convince the mother to let
us get him or her educated, take them into our little
school, give them their first lessons; finally get them
up to the level of education for their age, and
matriculate them into a state school (paying for
uniforms and all expenses): our work for that child is
only just begun (2 years)..Above are club
meetings7 June
2006

We continue to work with each child,
and will do so for the next two years. Visiting every
month for a "Club Meeting" , at which we monitor their
progress, give prizes, work with their techers, our
Social Workers see how things are going at school, at
home: and we pay for wehatever their parents cannon or
will not. We do this for two
years.

HIV / AIDS pandemic
thrives in Latin America

Sherrill
Musty, the publisher of the book "WHAT'S A VIRUS
ANYWAY

The UN has
declared that the number infected with HIV/AIDS in
Latin America is greater than that of Europe and
the USA combined. If you live in one of these
countries you would not know this - it is not
reported in the media, talked about in the
chambers of Government. They are in denial. But we
know it is there, children and families in the
communities we help are suffering: and there is
little help available.

For over three
decades Latin America has endured the unenviable
distinction of having more street children per capita
than any place on earth. What is less known is that for
every child who sleeps in the street there are 300 more
in practically the same condition who live on the street
by day but at night sleep under a plastic sheet or in a
woven read or adobe hovel with their siblings. Both are
classed as "Street Children", the distinction being 'IN'
the street, as opposed to 'ON' the street [those 'IN'
are more likely to be addicted to drugs]. When we first
arrived in Peru we worked with both types of Street
Children, but for the past three years we have
concentrated our efforts and resources in helping the
much larger but less known population of Street Children
who live On the street; those abandoned in their own
homes. During this time we have managed to open hub
centres in 8 cities, with 24 satellite children's
centres located in the poorest barrios: where we
educate, feed, medicate and care for them.Won't you join
us!.

Claire,
the British nurse in Ethiopia who inspired Live Aid 20
years ago when at a young age she had to decide the fate
of thousands of starving children: it fell to her to
select 60 children each night to fill the vacant places
in a shelter where they would be cared for and fed:
leaving up to 2,000 in line, knowing they would probably
not survive the night - such were the harsh realities of
the 1980's famine in the Horn of Africa, and the heavy
burdens placed of the care givers who went to help.
Claire continued her career in Kenya and in other
countries. Recently she returned to Ethiopia to look for
some to the people she had brought into the shelter as
children in the '80s. She was able to find many of them,
all survivors. Some were as poor as their parents had
been before the famine, while others were prosperous -
there was a marked difference between them. She asked
some of the successful ones to what they attributed
their success, whereas so many of their peers remained
badly off. They all said "A charity sponsored us in
school, we received an
education."

The Ministry
of Education have invited us to install our little
schools for very poor children within sellected
primary and secondary schools. We have agreed to
operate a pilot in one school, and if the
relationship works: will consider others.